Juana Inés de la Cruz The Woman Who Wrote Her Way into History

Celebrating Women's History Month with a badass a day.

There’s a story that feels like a spark in the dark, one of a woman who looked at a world that wanted to silence her and said, “No.” Her name was Juana Inés de la Cruz, and she wasn’t just a poet. She was a revolutionary.

Juana was born in 1648 in a small village near Mexico City, in what was then New Spain. From the start, she was different. She taught herself to read by the age of three and was devouring books from her grandfather’s library before most children could even write their names. By the time she was a teenager, she was fluent in Latin, Nahuatl, and Spanish, and her intellect was already the stuff of legend.

But here’s the thing about Juana. She lived in a world that didn’t know what to do with a woman like her. The options were limited—marriage or the convent. Juana chose the convent, not out of piety, but because it offered her the freedom to study, to write, and to think.

Once inside the convent, Juana became a prolific writer. Her poetry, plays, and essays explored everyt…